Tired Eyes
by jasminesandlillies
Summary: A one-shot in which Klaus and Caroline come to terms with the fact that the world can be cruel. This may become a one-shot series but undecided! Enjoy :)


**An all human one shot in which Klaus and Caroline come to terms with the fact that the world can be cruel sometimes. I don't own the characters but the work is all mine and I hope that you enjoy it! Reviews are welcome :) **

* * *

Doctor Niklaus Mikaelson rubbed his tired eyes as he waited for the cafeteria lady to make his cup of coffee. He was twelve hours into an eighteen hour shift in A&E and he desperately wanted to go home. Normally he found the A&E department fascinating but tonight he had been unsettled by what he had seen. There had been a mass shooting in Central London and the hospital had been thrown into chaos trying to help every injured and dying person that entered through the hospital doors. Klaus had been assigned to a young, pregnant woman who had been shot in the chest. As skilled as he was and as desperate as he had been to save her, the young woman had passed away, leaving behind a tiny baby boy born approximately at twenty-two weeks and with a very slim chance of survival. He dealt with death on a day to day basis but Klaus felt the sharpest pang when he thought of the little boy who would never know who his mother was. The fact that that baby may not even survive its first twenty-four hours made it even harder to bear.

Yes. Working this particular night in A&E had made Klaus doubt the existence of humanity. He sipped his coffee slowly, not even acknowledging its sour taste and stewed in his own dark thoughts. Every part of this place reminded him of the fact that the world was cruel. He looked at the man who sat two tables across from him, head in his hands. He had seen him every day this week and knew that his twelve year old daughter was slowly dying of cancer.

On the table to his left he saw a mother trying to feed her stubborn little girl some vegetables. Klaus didn't miss the tears in her eyes. Her husband was in Intensive Care on life support. Tomorrow they were going to ask her to consider switching off the machines.

Klaus thought about his own life and how it reflected the cruelty of the world. His little brother Henrik had been killed in a hit and run accident when he was just fourteen. The boy had had so much potential and it was ripped away in a matter of seconds by a joy-rider. He thought about how he himself had been abused by his violent step-father just because they weren't biologically related.

Yes, the world was too cruel.

Klaus decided he needed to speak to her, to his guiding light. Only she could pull him from the darkness. He raced towards the exits of the hospital, mobile phone in hand, fingers already itching to press the 'Call' button. The sky was lit with a handful of stars and the wind whispered around him. It was just after midnight and he knew things could get worse tonight before they got better. She picked up on the third ring.

"Hello?" Her voice was slightly raspy and he knew that he had disturbed her when she was sleeping. She still sounded beautiful.

"Hello, sweetheart."

"Nik? I didn't think you were finishing for another few hours."

"I don't, love."

"What's wrong, Nik? Has something happened? You sound sad."

"I just wanted to hear your voice, sweetheart. It makes me happy and...I'm not feeling very happy right now."

"What happened?"

Klaus told her about the motherless baby resting in Intensive Care. He told her about the shootings that had caused the hospital to erupt into chaos. He told her about the stories he could see unfolding in the cafeteria whilst he had drunk that terrible coffee. He told her that he was sick and tired of seeing so many terrible things each day.

She listened to him. She didn't interrupt him or say anything at all. She just listened to him expose all of these feelings to her. When he had finished, she sighed.

"Caroline?"

"I'm here, Nik. I understand why you feel the way that you're feeling right now. But I want you to remember that things will not always be this way. People are trying to find the cure to cancer everyday and everyday they get a tiny bit closer. For every abused child in this world, there are people fighting against child abuse. Humanity exists, Nik, you just can't always see it. It's up to good, strong people like you to pull it and fight for it. I believe in you."

He smiled at her words. In his thirty-two years on earth, she had been the only one to say that she believed in him.

"I love you, Caroline."

"I love you, Nik."

He ended the call and re-entered the hospital, willing the hours to fly by so he could go home and wrap his arms around his Caroline.

Klaus was lucky in that the hours did indeed fly by him. Nothing sinister happened. In fact, he had managed to save the life of a man having a heart attack. On his way out, Klaus stopped by the Intensive Care unit to see how the baby boy was coping. He had the tiniest body that Klaus had ever seen but he could see the steady rise and fall of his chest and hear the comforting bleeping of the heart monitors. His family would be around him soon. His heavy heart felt a bit lighter as he made his way home to his wife.

The sun was beginning to rise as he opened the front door and his nose was assaulted by a variety of smells. He entered the kitchen to see Caroline by the stove flipping bacon and sausages in one pan and pancakes in another. She was singing softly to herself as she piled mountains of food on plates and made a stack of chocolate chip pancakes. He admired her as she wiggled her hips around in time to her singing.

"I know you're watching me, Nik."

He chuckled slightly. They had been together for six years and married for five. Spending so much time together had made them so attuned to each other that they could sense each other's presence in a room before any words were spoken.

"This is a lovely welcome home, sweetheart."

"I thought you could use it."

He wrapped his arms around her waist and she sighed contentedly.

"Thank you, Caroline."

"You're welcome."

She turned to face him and frowned.

"You look tired." She rose up onto her tiptoes to kiss the shadows under his eyes, as if she could magically make them disappear.

"So do you." He said wryly, causing her to wrinkle up her nose and him to laugh again.

"I am. After I got off the phone with you, your son decided he would wake up too and began to kick up a storm. And then I got a craving for pancakes. So, I was wandering around a supermarket at 4am in my pyjamas with your baby practicing his soccer skills on my bladder."

Klaus grinned and placed a hand tenderly on her swollen belly. Caroline placed her hand over his and said "Can you feel him?"

He nodded and Caroline was relieved to see his face light up as he felt the thudding of his son against the palm of his hand.

"He won't be like those people that hurt others for fun, Nik," she whispered, their eyes locking, "He'll be like you. He will want to help people like you do. And I bet he's as stubborn as you are too."

"And he will be like you. Strong and full of light. The stubbornness comes from both sides, sweetheart." He winked at her and she rolled her eyes. "Let's just hope his temperament is milder than the both of ours."

At that Caroline let out a peal of laughter and embraced her husband fully.

"Come on let's eat. Then maybe we can finally go to sleep. I'm glad you're off this weekend. We can spend it in bed together." She said suggestively, causing him to growl softly and nip her neck.

She giggled and pointed a wooden spoon covered in batter at him. "Only after you have assembled the crib with me."

He groaned. "Caroline, you're twenty-six! Surely you can manage to assemble a crib by yourself?"

Caroline looked up at him with huge blue eyes that looked wide and innocent. "I'm pregnant. I can't do manual labour."

He just rolled her eyes at her and they both dug into their breakfasts. A short while later, Caroline was leading her husband into their bedroom. Klaus kissed her softly as they settled under the covers, one arm around her chest and the other around her waist, hovering protectively over their baby. They fell asleep instantly, happy to be so close to each other and the horrors of the night were almost a figment of his imagination.

The sun was just beginning to burst through the closed curtains as they slept peacefully. It illuminated the young couple, the almost family, and symbolised the start of a new day.


End file.
